


Years and years

by AroAceMess



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mortal, Car crash mentioned but not described, F/M, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Most characters are there in passing, Nico Di Angelo has an accent, Nico di Angelo Speaks Italian, Nico plays the piano, Nico-centric, Not Beta Read, Not Canon Compliant, fight me, hazel and Bianca are god tier sisters, nicos life, ok dad hades, puberty hits Nico like a truck, spoiler - Bianca and Maria do die
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-07 16:49:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18877222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AroAceMess/pseuds/AroAceMess
Summary: He’d been a quiet kid at three, hidden behind a cascade of curls and too many freckles he sent all the moms into a cooing tizzy. The other kids had toddled around jumbling out broken sentences trying to mimic the smooth Italian spoken by parents and teachers. He could talk better than them, he liked to sing as well with his mama and Bianca at their old piano. But at school he sat hidden in his curls alone in the sandbox and hit anyone who came to close with his little pink spade.——Small snippets from Nico’s life from 3-16





	Years and years

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting in my drafts for like, three months and I attempted polishing it up today as a means of procrastinating revising for my philosophy and ethics exam tomorrow. 
> 
> Feel free to point out any mistakes, I need all the help i can get!!

He’d been a quiet kid at three, hidden behind a cascade of curls and too many freckles he sent all the moms into a cooing tizzy. The other kids had toddled around jumbling out broken sentences trying to mimic the smooth Italian spoken by parents and teachers. He could talk better than them, he liked to sing as well with his mama and Bianca at their old piano. But at school he sat hidden in his curls alone in the sandbox and hit anyone who came to close with his little pink spade. 

At four he learnt his letters and shapes and numbers drawing out clumsy N I C O’s in giant lettering on sugar paper for his mama to put up, his clumsy macaroni and glitter art covered their walls from floor to ceiling a backdrop to him tapping out his first clumsy ‘twinkle twinkle little star’ on the big piano. His mama had pulled him tight and practically glowed with joy. He made a few friends, other quiet kids who liked to colour and didn’t care for dress up. Looking back he couldn’t recall their faces. 

Five passes in a blur of little kiddie fights and learning how to share and how to write and which sounds go with what and painting animals on everything and glitter and biscuits and juice and tapping more lullabies on the piano keys with Bianca as his mother takes videos and beams. And then there’s a little ceremony, they are wrapped in bits of satin fabric with paper caps they decorated perched on their heads as they stumble across a little stage and collect a paper print out with some cheery message they can’t read on it but they smile and wave and it’s a happy day. 

Bianca has already been at primary school for three years when he starts and she’s a big girl and promises she’ll protect him and that it ‘won’t be that bad’ he grins and she ruffles his curls as he runs off to line up outside the classroom. He makes a little group of friends, the smarter reserved kids who can already read a little and write with the pencils and not the crayons. Bianca sometimes eats lunch with him and all the kids thinks she’s soo coool. At home they read together and he still plays piano with mama. Kids ask where his dad is he says America. 

The teacher next year is really impressed with his reading and writing and counting and he grins all gap toothed and innocent as he says ‘Bianca helped me in the holidays’ and the teacher all but melts. He’s given extra work to feed his hungry brain and all the kids think he’s just the coolest and their parents pinch his chubby cheeks and invite him over for dinner. He starts having piano lessons and English lessons because ‘all the cool music people can speak it mama’ she grins at her little boy, how could she deny him anything. 

8 9 and 10 pass in a blur, Bianca in lower secondary school now and he and his whole friend group are obsessed by card games. He still has his English lessons and piano lessons and is very good at both. Him and Bianca stay up past their bed time and play duets and sing softly to each other in broken English and Italian while their mother records them. He’s so happy,he might have a gap in his teeth that will probably need braces and the beginnings of acne, but he is loved and happy. 

On his first day of lower secondary he’s a little scared but not that bad his mama and Bianca wave from the car as they speed off to get Bianca to her first day of upper secondary in time. They did introductions and he’d said ‘my name is nico di Angelo and I like playing piano and reading and I’m almost fluent in English.’ The class has tittered excitedly and the teacher quieted them before moving on. He’d sat with a few of the kids he’d met at lunch time, the food wasn’t the best but he ignored it in favour of having a rather animated conversation with a girl about mythomagic when a teacher looking sympathetic for some reason had whisked him off to an office. And she told him what had happened in such a soft voice it made him angry she’d explained it like he was five and didn’t know what a car crash was. He knew she didn’t speak English so he’d shouted curse words in the harsh language.

Then he was at a hospital and then fitfully sleeping in some foster home somewhere and then he was at the airport. His dad was stood waiting for him, they Skyped at least once every three weeks or so but seeing him for real was different. He was stood with his wife Persephone and their daughter hazel who was a year younger than him. He buries his face in his fathers jacket as sobs wrack his entire body. 

He’s moving to America, New York the big apple, his father lets him take all the sheet music records cds and home videos he can find in the house and makes arrangements for the piano to be shipped to his town house. Persephone welcomes him with open arms and hazel takes to him like a fish to water, but he isn’t the same. Posiened with grief he looses his bouncy smiles and twinkling eyes and soft olive skin - replaces with sparse quick quirks of the lips dull eyes and pale skin marred with eye bags dark from insomnia induced fatigue. 

New York is busy and loud, he likes that he blends in here. He can speak English but he still has a heavy accent so they decide he and hazel will be homeschooled until high school and he likes it. He has a therapist who get him to shout at things and play piano which are two things he can do to express emotions, they figured out after two sessions that the normal talking approach wasn’t going to work. He gets diagnosed with anxiety insomnia adhd and dyslexia. He takes adderal and drinks espresso and herbal tea in equal measures. 

The summer before he starts high school his dad sends him and hazel to a summer camp for kids with learning disabilities. They are both incredibly shy hazel in her little dresses and cardigans and too polite manor and eyes like molten gold and nico wire thin with too much sarcasm braces and acne hidden under curly hair and a thick accent from speaking more Italian than English at home; they cut a striking pair. The insane camp director had put them in a cabin made of black stone with Hades carved into the side. His dads name? 

A blonde girl called Annabeth had explained how they were put into cabins and everything made more sense. It was strange still but it made more sense. He was 14 hazel was 13 and annabeth was 16 and she let them sit with her friends and took the craft and cooking classes with them too. 

And then there was Percy. Two years older and tall for his age, black windswept hair and beautiful eyes. Nico had known deep, deep down for a while that he wasn’t into girls but this was different. Before it could explode into a full grown crush he squashed it down and repressed it and carried on as normal. Despite making a few friends he and hazel mainly stayed in the cabin and read. 

Then high school came. He was tiny and scrawny with train track braces and acne and a still had a hilariously thick accent and a penchant for excelling. People seemed to hate him. He was the home schooled loner freak who had to pop pills to feel sane. He got shoved into lockers wedgied and had his head stuck in toilets. He hated school. On the weekends he go out to get smoothies and would go shopping with Reyna - aside from hazel it was the only light in his week. 

He went to camp again in the winter. He was 15 now and way too low, him and hazel were joined at the hip terrified this would turn into the cold halls of their school. But everyone was nice to him and while he still hung out with Reyna and Jason and that lot but he made his own friends, the stoll not-twins the camp kleptos, Lou Ellen with her love of white magic and heavy perfumes (and a little weed), Cecil Markowitz who was a little too good at cards and will solace who spent most of his time helping in the infirmary and was too damn pretty. His chest didn’t hurt whenever he looked at Percy and annabeth. 

The next semester was much of the same, name calling beatings and so on so forth. But him and hazel spent every day counting down to when they could finally go back to camp. 

Over the summer he changes. His braces get taken off and he shoots up to 5”10, and thanks to actively partaking in activities he fills out a bit and is more attractively lean than scrawny. Piper practically throws some french product that smells like sea water at him on the first day and says ‘use it once a day for the love of god, tell me when you run out’ and it takes care of his acne pretty well. One of pipers relatives, a girl named lacy, kidnapps him and buzzes his hair into a surprisingly nice under cut and gives him better shampoo. He looks genuinely happy and healthy for the first time since he was 11. 

Will and the stolls arrive together about four weeks into camp, him and an over excited Lou are stood at the top of the hill to greet them. Lou is practically vibrating out of her skin ‘why are you so excited?’ He’s genuinely confused at this point. Her grin is borderline manic when she blurts back ‘I cannot wait till he sees you dude!’ Now he’s just more confused. 

Travis comes up first just holding a back pack grinning like he’s won the lottery ‘I won a bet so they had to drag my luggage up here - nico dude you look omg.’ He turns to Lou matching her grin ‘oh my fucking god he’s gonna die.’ She nods so fast nico could’ve sworn her neck was going to break. Connor is up next and he takes one look at nico and yells ‘will get your ass up here my man you have to see this’ he dumps the luggage in a small pile as will comes up the hill hauling two suitcases and three duffle bags ‘why do you guys have so much - oh dear lord.’ He locks eyes with nico and is suddenly running back down the hill to catch two suitcases. The other three are pissing themselves as he excuses himself still very confused to his cooking class with Reyna. 

She explains. He melts like the butter in the pan infront of them. 

Will kisses him after the bonfire two days later and does not stop kissing him as often as possible until they have to leave. For the last week of the summer he Skypes will and his other friends almost constantly, but still goes out with Reyna for their Saturday smoothie time. 

He’s in 10th grade now and hazel is in 9th. He still has a thick accent and wears a little too much black but now the whispers about him are more shocked and admiring rather than scathing and mean. Hazel is starting 9th grade and is slightly terrified. She sticks beside nico and makes sure frank is always a speed dial away, he is even though he’s on a different time zone. A girl even asks him out, he’s very much unequipped for this so he flushes beet red and trips over a barely sentence resembling something like ‘so sorry your pretty and all, and I have no idea why you’d be interested in me, but I’m kinda dating someone.’ And god that’s strange to say out loud. ‘I think at least. I’ll have to ask on skype. Again so sorry you seem so nice would you mind just being friends?’ The girl just laughs and pats his bicep. 

‘Of course, that’s so adorable your a good guy di Angelo.’ He’s honestly amazed he didn’t fuck that one up. 

It’s all strange to him. He’s living in America, he’s happier and healthier than he has been in a long while and for all the problems yet to be fixed he is getting help and getting better. It’s slow but it’s progress. He has built a new family out of his last biological links and some new totally outside ones, he is loved even if sometimes it’s hard to admit that to himself. He has friends a family a boyfriend somehow, and even though he is coming to terms with their passing he still thinks of his mom and Bianca every day and in every piece of music he plays. He doesn’t know what’s to come next, doesn’t really give a shit in all honesty, but now is good. One step forward. No steps back.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed, we do love a good comment and a kudos!
> 
> Hope you have a good day/night and remember 
> 
> Skincare is wincare be like piper, make acne ur bitch.


End file.
